RIP Mark E. Smith

29 Truly Excellent and Typically Weird Stories About Mark E. Smith

so now I sleep in ditches

hoooow bad are english musicians?

lol

In 2010, Smith guested on the great Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, despite having no clue who or what Gorillaz was. "I actually thought Gorillaz were some kiddie rap, like helping out Dizzee Rascal or something," the bandleader said in a subsequent interview with Clash. "Where I live in Manchester, Gorillaz mean jack shit, honestly."

um, yeah?

damon got his terrible revenge by naming the next gorillaz album 'the fall'

"That's a fucking drum riff I wrote"

From the Newsweek(!) piece sleeve posted, talking about Pavement.
True though, he/ the fall wrote drum riffs that were amazing - fantastic life, no bulbs, container drivers... loads more where the drum figure was the hook.

As a huge Pavement fan, can anyone point me to the most obvious lifts?

as a fan of both i always felt like the whole thing was pretty overplayed honestly

i don't think i've ever thought about the fall listening to pavement.

I think the most commonly mentioned is "Conduit for Sale" and "A New Face in Hell".

to me the most "Pavement" sounding Fall album is Middle Class Revolt but that's from 1994 when Pavement was well established already

Right yeah. How can I how can I xp

xxp yep, that one for sure, there's a couple more as well but it's been years since I listened to Slanted & Enchanted

I think the most commonly mentioned is "Conduit for Sale" and "A New Face in Hell".

― jmm, Friday, January 26, 2018 12:51 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha yeah wow that never occurred to me but totally

Our Singer has kinda a Hip Priest beat happening ... the similarities between the two bands are overstated though, yeah.

There are more, if you want to hear it. 'Hit the plane down', 'Chesley's Little Wrists', arguably 'Two States'

'No life singed her'

Compare the artwork of say "Slanted & Enchanted" to "This Nation's Saving Grace"...

i feel like pavement was a much more conventional band than the fall ever was, though they had their idiosyncrasies they ultimately (esp in their maturity as a band) wrote rock songs

ultimately, so did The Fall

i can't remember what pavement's actual fall cover sounded like. i used to have that single. probably sounded like pavement.

sure you aren't thinking of their REM cover, "Camera"? I don't recall an actual Fall cover

They’re pretty different sounding bands, Pavement loose and ambling, The Fall more tightly wound, but no doubt Malkmus and co. lifted occasional musical bits and the influence in song/album titles, artwork, lyrics seems fairly clear.

Even these kinds of freakish fantasies have their roots in the world from which Smith came. My friend, the writer Steve Hanson, once told me his Lancashire high school classroom was “full of little Mark E Smiths” evolving their own bizarre slang and tall tales. This collective propensity to daydream and experiment with language has a long working-class history. It’s an implicit challenge to the pressure of speaking “properly” and settling into the drudgery of your expected role.

https://theconversation.com/northern-white-crap-that-talks-back-the-falls-mark-e-smith-spoke-for-weird-manchester-90710

Enjoyed this appreciation from David Wilkinson.

pavement did the classical in '97 or thereabouts (during a Peel Session iirc) xp

it was on their major leagues single. a peel session track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STY9g7-YPA

xpost xpost

oh cool! thanks y'all

Tons of Drag City-era Pavement aped The Fall pretty hard, this one notably:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67p7DN-SWo

i feel like pavement was a much more conventional band than the fall ever was, though they had their idiosyncrasies they ultimately (esp in their maturity as a band) wrote rock songs

― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 26, 2018 1:09 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ultimately, so did The Fall

― circa1916, Friday, January 26, 2018 1:11 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay maybe i didn't word it right but put it this way, i think esp post-crooked rain, i think pavement wrote a lot of songs w/chord changes melodies etc that were pretty conventional, much more so than, like all recent fall albums which are often one weird punishing riff with synth gurgles and mark e declaiming on them...

like you could cover a lot of pavement songs with an acoustic guitar and they would still seem like the song, whereas (obviously not 100% of the time) often i don't think you can easily separate fall songs from their arragement, instrumentation and smith's delivery...

Are these Blaney albums any good? I'd never even heard of them.

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/ed-blaney

Seems Mark featured prominently on all of them.

"In the early days of the Fall, he financed the band by giving Tarot readings to local housewives" hahaha

That Fall influence was super evident in Pavement's early days—extending to the sleeve art as mentioned and a lot of the aesthetic, the two-drummer run, I remember thinking abt Malkmus this guy even dresses like MES and shares some mannerisms. I say this as a fan of Pavement

i thought that whole Peel session was Fall covers tbh but i might be misremembering

Sonic Youth did that, don't know about Pavement.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/e4e1b6929eb947f11bb2274f8297c5d1/tumblr_inline_nd2tug8k6q1qhyw63.gif

I find those Blaney records to be kind of lifeless, though they did a good "Transfusion" together

xxp

oh right, i was misremembering then

has an actual cause of death been announced? it doesn't seem like they were even sure why he was sick recently.

bout ten years ago, there was an ad on tv for I think like a fancy car or something that licensed a Fall tune…it was in UMS' phrasing "one weird punishing riff with synth gurgles and mark e declaiming on them..." and this brontosaurus, swaggy groove…does anyone know what the name of the tune is?

Blindness, great song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVnsmADFCIg

rock 'em sock 'em, UMS!

lord knows everyone here should watch this…saw it a few years ago and he is of course magnificent in the interviews…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InXwZc4RS7M

The UK had this one more recently, which ended up in court...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=89yWGa-ibjs

(^ car ad, touch sensitive)

I was listening to someone on The Last Word (R4 obit show) talking about MES earlier. He was saying he was like an inverse of the classic Con-man psyche, who'd possess an intuitive talent for saying what you want to hear. In his case he had a gift for zoning in on people's insecurity and doing the exact opposite.

Wonderful work by Jes Skolnik

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-ugly-truths-of-loving-the-falls-mark-e-smith/

yeah I just read that, really good

^ me too, although I think because I saw the link on Ned's FB. I think it sums up how I look at him much better than I could.

that was really well done